The newest grandchild gets her own role after visit to Georgia

I never had much to do with babies.

I had siblings born when I was 2, 7, 9 and 11, but all that was a very long time ago and I have little memory of it. I had nephews born in 1996 and 1999, but they were on the East Coast and I was in California, so I wasn't extremely involved with their infancy.

In fact, it was grandchildren that gave me my first real involvement. When Madison was born in Beijing in September 2008, I heard her cries over the phone before she was 10 minutes old. Less than two weeks later, she slept for an hour on my chest while I sang tunelessly to her.

I still consider it one of the 10 best moments of my life.

Lexington and Madison

Three years later, Lexington was born in Seattle. Before he was much more than a month old, I was meeting him. It seemed to me I had both boxes checked -- a granddaughter and a grandson. Since Pauline was the only one of my two kids planning to have children of her own, it all had fallen into place.

Or so I thought. Then at the beginning of 2014, Pauline told us she and Ryan had decided to have a third child.

Huh? Granddaughter, grandson and ... what?

My own grandparents had two children and nine grandchildren. Five girls and four boys. They never seemed to have trouble remembering names and ages. Maybe they didn't overthink these things in the way I obviously do.

Anyway, the third grandchild was born on Halloween. Thanks to ultrasounds, we had known for some time the baby would be a girl and her parents had decided to name her Albanie.

Albanie, May 2015

She was only two months old when we visited them just after Christmas, so she wasn't that involved. But last week Pauline came to visit for three days and brought Albanie with her. The baby is nearly seven months old, and while she isn't walking or talking yet, she is definitely reacting to her surroundings.

Just like her big sister and big brother, she has a great smile. They get it from their mother, who has a truly world-class smile.

What was wonderful about it was getting to know her as her own person. Now Albanie isn't just the baby or the third grandchild. She is my wonderful granddaughter and every bit as special to me as the other two.

We won't see her all that often, But the glories of Skype will allow us to be more frequent spectators as she starts doing more and more different things.

She will travel the world, just like the rest of her family. She may not do what Lex did -- circle the globe before his first birthday, but to paraphrase Dr. Seuss:

"Oh, the places she'll see."